Yuan Kewen

Yuan Kewen was born in 1890, the sixteenth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, in Hanseong, Korea (present-day Seoul, South Korea); his family’s native place was Xiangcheng, Henan.⁠[1][2]

He was the second son of Yuan Shikai; his courtesy name was Baocen, also written Baocun, his art name was Hanyun and his childhood name Zhao’er.⁠[1][3]

His birth mother, Jin Yuexian, was Korean; after his birth he was brought up by Lady Shen.⁠[1]

Wang Zhenliang’s article in the newspaper Cangshu Bao states that he was indulged from childhood and acquired the ways of a young nobleman, never studying in earnest but exceptionally clever. An article in the weekly Fazhi Zhoumo states that he was bright from childhood, the most remarkable of the Yuan sons, and rather self-regarding. Zhang Chuancai, a daughter of Zhang Boju, says in an oral account published in the magazine Sanlian Shenghuo Zhoukan that soon after his birth he was given in adoption to Lady Shen, Yuan Shikai’s favored first concubine; having no children of her own, she doted on him and gave in to almost his every wish, so that he grew up willful and unruly and never studied in earnest, but he was very clever, could take in ten lines at a glance and never forgot what he had read, loved singing Kunqu, played with old coins, sought the company of men of letters and said that his ambition was to be a celebrated man of letters. Fazhi Zhoumo’s article states that he often likened himself to Cao Zhi (Cao Zijian) of the Three Kingdoms period. Yuan Shikai’s granddaughter Yuan Jiati, in a 2008 interview with Huanqiu Renwu, recounts a story that is told of him: Yuan Shikai sometimes kept his sons to eat with him when they came to pay their respects, and once, it is said, when he had already eaten his fill his father handed him a hot steamed bun; not daring to refuse it, he slipped it into his sleeve, and it burned off a layer of his skin.⁠[1][4][5][6]

An article in the Tunghai University Library journal gives his year of birth as 1889.⁠[2]

Yuan Shikai had one wife and nine concubines, and 17 sons and 15 daughters in all; the eldest son was Yuan KedingYuan KedingYuan Keding, courtesy name Yuntai, was the eldest son of Yuan Shikai; fluent in German and English, he commanded the Army Model Regiment and in 1915 was a core member of the Chouanhui, the society that campaigned for a constitutional monarchy; he came to be called the “crown prince of Hongxian.” After Yuan Shikai’s death he lived for a time in seclusion; under the Japanese occupation he disavowed in print a statement supporting the “New Order in East Asia” that had been published over his name without his consent, and he spent his last years in the household of his cousin Zhang Boju, dying at the end of the 1950s.Open the full entry.⁠[7][8]

In 1902, the twenty-eighth year of the Guangxu reign, the office of the governor-general of Zhili moved to Tianjin, and Yuan Shikai engaged Yan Xiu, Fang Dishan, Dong Bingu and others to teach his sons.⁠[1]

Under Yan Xiu’s guidance Yuan Kewen’s calligraphy advanced quickly, while his collecting of old books and coins owed much to Fang Dishan; the two later became related through the marriage of their children.⁠[1]

He was well read in the Four Books and Five Classics. The same article in the Tunghai University Library journal states that he studied under Fang Erqian and was accomplished in calligraphy and fond of old books; an article by Liu Jingyun in the Shanghai Review of Books column of The Paper states that Fang Erqian, courtesy name Dishan, was his teacher and also his in-law through the marriage of their children.⁠[2][9]

In his early years he lived with his family in the Yuan family mansion at Dayingmen in Tianjin, of which nothing now remains.⁠[1]

Between 1909 and 1911, while Yuan Shikai lived in retirement at Huanshang Village, he took part in exchanges of poems; the poems, 25 in all under 19 titles, are preserved mainly in Guitang changheshi, compiled by Yuan Kewen, and Huancun yixing, compiled by Yuan Keding.⁠[10]

In April 1910, when Zhou Fu, who was related to Yuan Shikai through the marriage of their children, traveled to Henan to visit him and reached the Yuan residence in Weihui prefecture, Yuan Kewen came from Zhangde on his father’s instructions to meet him.⁠[3]

Around the age of twenty Yuan Kewen became absorbed in the study of editions and bibliography; he took the book collector Li Shengduo as his teacher and within half a year had made marked progress.⁠[8][1]

In 1912 several dozen rarities from Shengyu’s Yuhuage collection, sold to Wanyan Jingxian, passed almost at once in their entirety to Yuan Kewen; they included Song printed editions of Fangyan, Qunjing yinbian, Cefu yuangui and Wenxuan zhu, together with several dozen Yuan and Ming printed books and fine manuscript copies.⁠[1]

The years 1914 to 1916 were the high point of Yuan Kewen’s book collecting; Lun Ming recorded that in 1915 and 1916 he bought Song printed editions in quantity without regard to price, and booksellers vied to hunt them out for him.⁠[1]

A paper by Nicholas L. Chan in the Journal of Chinese Studies observes that most of his fine Song and Yuan editions were gathered at the time when his father’s drive for the throne was at its height.⁠[8]

In 1915 a Han shu zhu described as a Mao Jin facsimile of a Song edition was offered for sale in Shanghai, and he secured it for 3,000 yuan; he also paid 3,000 yuan for a small-format Song printing of the Lotus Sutra that Yang Shoujing had obtained in Japan.⁠[1]

In the same year a copy of Youlan jushi Dongjing meng hua lu was on offer at a bookshop, and Fu Zengxiang and Dong Kang declined it because of the price; alerted by Bu Zhangwu, Yuan Kewen went with the money, only to find that the owner had taken the book back. Later Han Zuoquan, proprietor of the Wendetang bookshop, brought the book to him, and he bought it for 700 silver dollars, noting at the end of the volume that he had acquired it in the eighth month of the yimao year (1915) at the Wendetang bookshop in Haiwangcun.⁠[11]

He identified the book with the Song edition entered in the Jiguge catalogue of rare books, Jiguge zhencang miben shumu, while noting that the impression was later and the paper probably of the late Yuan period.⁠[11]

In the first years of the Republic he paid a high price for the Song printed Tang nülang Yu Xuanji shi (poems of the Tang woman poet Yu Xuanji) bearing colophons by Huang Pilie, and enjoyed it together with Liu Meizhen and an attendant maid, Wenyun.⁠[12]

In May 1914, while Zhou Fu was staying in Tianjin, Yuan Shikai, by then president, sent Yuan Kewen to fetch him; Zhou Fu then spent seven days at the presidential residence in Beijing.⁠[3]

While Yuan Shikai was preparing to take the throne, Yuan Keding became a core member of the Chouanhui, the society that campaigned for a constitutional monarchy, and most of his younger brothers disapproved of the undertaking.⁠[8]

The article in the weekly Fazhi Zhoumo states that Yuan Kewen had no interest in political power and differed from his father and elder brother over the monarchy, and an article in The Paper has him opposing the enthronement from beginning to end. He wrote a poem of remonstrance whose closing couplet speaks of the wind and rain of high places and warns against climbing to the topmost storey of the jade tower; Chan’s paper reads it as plainly intended as an indirect remonstrance with his father, and the Fazhi Zhoumo article adds that it was widely recited at the time. The article in The Paper describes the poem as satirical. A 2016 article in the magazine Huanqiu Renwu states that, in contrast with his elder brother’s dream of becoming crown prince, he opposed his father’s enthronement from the outset and, while his brother pressed the monarchy forward, gave himself to poetry, opera and the company of men of note; in the autumn of 1915, when talk of the enthronement was at its height, he took a concubine on an outing to the Summer Palace and went boating on Kunming Lake, writing two poems, from one of which this couplet comes; it caused a sensation and was taken as the voice of his opposition to the monarchy. Zhang Chuancai’s account likewise says that he strongly opposed Yuan Keding’s single-minded promotion of a return to monarchy.⁠[4][8][13][14][5]

Chan’s paper states that on December 11, 1915, Yuan Shikai announced that the following year would open the Hongxian reign and prepared to assume the throne, and that before this Yuan Kewen had already brought trouble on himself by his poem of remonstrance and been placed under house arrest by his father. Zhang Chuancai’s account says that Yuan Shikai, in a rage, confined him at Beihai and forbade him to associate with men of letters.⁠[8][5]

Chan’s paper relates that, talented and held down by his elder brother, he was compared at the time to Cao Zhi, the poet-prince of the Three Kingdoms period; the Fazhi Zhoumo article states that he often likened himself to Cao Zhi.⁠[8][4]

Chan’s paper relates that the fifth brother, Yuan KequanYuan KequanYuan Kequan (1898–1941) was the fifth son of Yuan Shikai and a poet in the classical style; after his father’s death he lived in seclusion in Tianjin, and he left six collections of verse.Open the full entry, was favored by their father and wore the dress of a crown prince as Yuan Keding and Yuan Kewen did; Yuan Kewen was known as the “second imperial son.”⁠[8][3]

In a letter dated the fifth day of the twelfth month, Zhou Fu asked him to press for the protection of the rights of the Zhongxing coal mine at Zaozhuang and its railway from Taierzhuang to Zaozhuang; Zhou Qiqian, a descendant of Zhou Fu, dates the letter to the end of 1915 and holds that Zhou Fu wrote to him because he, too, did not favor restoring the monarchy.⁠[3]

Zhang Boju, in his annotated poems on the Hongxian period, Xu Hongxian jishi shi buzhu, records that when the licentiate Wu Buchan memorialized against the monarchy, angered Yuan Shikai and was in danger, Yuan Kewen took him to the train at Qianmen; having no money on him, Yuan Kewen got five yuan from a servant to buy the ticket. In the same note Zhang Boju adds that Wu Buchan, a clansman of Wu Zeyu, owned a rubbing of the Orchid Pavilion preface known as the Luoshui Lanting, bearing colophons by Academician Xianyu and others and obtained from the family of Yang Zhitang of the Haiyuan Pavilion; afterwards Wu Buchan’s letters of Anwu went to Wang Shitong and the rubbing to Yuan Kewen, and it was duly retitled the Wuyuan yiming Lanting (the Orchid Pavilion of Five Yuan and One Life); Wu Buchan later refused to go to the capital again, saying that there was no second Luoshui Lanting and no second young master Hanyun. The note also says that the rubbing later passed to Yu Youren, that the origin of the words five yuan, one life could no longer be traced, and that Liu Yimou, when asked, did not know the story either.⁠[8]

Zhang Boju relates in a note to his poems that the copies of the newspaper Shuntian Shibao that Yuan Shikai read were all forgeries printed by Yuan Keding, and that the deception came to light when a sister of Yuan Kewen brought in peanuts wrapped in a sheet of the genuine paper; the article in The Paper has Yuan Kewen and his sister Yuan Shuzhen together exposing Yuan Keding’s forging of the newspaper. An article by Li Xianzhe in the newspaper Tuanjie Bao, excerpted in Wenzhai Bao, quotes the recollection of Yuan Jingxue, Yuan Shikai’s third daughter: her maid brought home a large packet of spiced fried broad beans wrapped in a whole sheet of the Shuntian Shibao; noticing that its tone differed from the copies the household usually saw, she asked her second brother, Yuan Kewen, who said that he had already seen a different version outside but had not dared to tell their father; that night she gave the paper to her father, and the next morning Yuan Shikai, having established that Yuan Keding was responsible, gave him a severe whipping.⁠[8][13][15]

The Tunghai University Library journal article states that he opposed the monarchy and later fled to Shanghai.⁠[2]

Yuan Shikai died of uremia on June 6, 1916; Yu Ge relates that when their father’s illness was at its worst Yuan Kewen reproached Yuan Keding, saying that it was entirely his doing that their father had come to this.⁠[7][16]

Thereafter the Yuan household broke up, and Yuan Kewen moved between Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and other places, occupying himself with collecting, calligraphy and painting, lyric and regular verse, prose writing and opera singing. Chan’s paper states that after Yuan Shikai’s death he and his teacher Fang Dishan lived next door to each other in Tianjin, poor and careworn but content. His granddaughter Yuan Jing says in the 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article that after Yuan Shikai’s death her grandfather moved to Tianjin but often went to Shanghai, because he loved singing opera and calligraphy and had many fellow amateur performers and literary friends there, and that he was also a big brother of the Green Gang in Shanghai.⁠[4][8][14]

From then on he was without a source of income, his circumstances grew steadily harder, and his books were gradually dispersed. Zhang Chuancai’s account says that all his life he spent money like water and never valued it; after he came back from a pleasure trip to Shanghai in 1918, Xu Shichang, then president, to whom Yuan Shikai on his deathbed had entrusted his children, wanted to break his legs with a walking stick.⁠[1][8][5]

In 1917 Yuan Kewen further acquired Song pocket-size editions of the Book of Changes, the Book of Documents, the Mao version of the Book of Songs, the Book of Rites, the Rites of Zhou, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Analects and the Mencius, among others, and set aside a room named Bajingge (Pavilion of the Eight Classics) to house them.⁠[1]

In the first half of the 1920s Yuan Kewen lived in Shanghai in increasingly straitened circumstances, and most of his rare books passed to Fu Zengxiang, Ding Fubao, Ye Dehui, Liu Chenggan, Li Sihao, Zhu Wenjun, Pan Zongzhou and others. A 2024 report by China News Service states that part of his diary, Hanyun riji, called the Beixing riji (Diary of the Journey North), was written when he went north back to Tianjin in the autumn of 1923. Liu Jingyun’s article quotes Guo Yujing’s Yunying yanshi, published in the newspaper Jingbao in 1931, as saying that when he reached Tianjin in 1924 the railway between Beijing and Fengtian had just been cut, so he stayed on at the Xilai Hotel in Tianjin.⁠[1][17][9]

Pan Zongzhou obtained the largest share, including Song printings of Liji zhengyi and Gongyang jingzhuan jiegu; half of what Zhu Wenjun obtained later went to the Beijing Library.⁠[1]

Pressed for money, he also made over the Youlan jushi Dongjing meng hua lu to Pan Zongzhou, a native of Nanhai, Guangdong, whose library was called Baolitang; after the founding of the People’s Republic of China Pan Zongzhou’s descendant Pan Shizi gave the Baolitang books to the state, and the volume is now in the National Library of China.⁠[11]

Two accounts are given of what became of the Tang nülang Yu Xuanji shi: Wang Zhenliang’s article states that, in urgent need of cash, he pawned it with a case of old coins to Ding Fubao and later redeemed it and sold it to Fu Zengxiang, who had offered a high price; Li Jun’s article in The Paper states that he pawned it to Zhou Jin of Tianjin and that it later passed to the Baolitang. Wang Zhenliang’s article records that the book is now in the National Library of China.⁠[1][12]

In an autobiographical note he wrote that he had just turned thirty, an age for achievement, but that with the world in turmoil and everyone chasing gain he would not stoop to humiliation. He went on to say that for this reason he was for the time being keeping company with mist and cloud and scraping a living with his pen, not by choice.⁠[8]

When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, Yuan Kewen composed a funeral couplet, one line of which, alluding to the historian Sima Qian’s placing of Xiang Yu among the basic annals, declares that heroes are not to be judged by success or failure.⁠[8]

In the second half of the 1920s Yuan Kewen moved to Liangyili in the British concession of Tianjin, where he spent his last years.⁠[1]

Before that he had usually lived at the Yuan family garden on Diwei Road in Tianjin, where most of his children were born; it also housed his books in Tianjin and was named Yijianlou (Tower of the One Mirror) after a Shang-dynasty bronze mirror that he had chanced to acquire.⁠[1]

On the evening of March 22, 1931, Yuan Kewen died at his home in Tianjin; the obituary notice carried by the pictorial Beiyang Huabao states that he had been in sound health and died of a sudden illness.⁠[1][8]

Wang Zhenliang’s article speaks of his life of 41 years, while Chan’s paper gives his age at death as only 42. An article by Si Shunwei in Guangming Daily in 2013, Zhang Chuancai’s account and the 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article also give 42.⁠[1][8][18][5][14]

The Fazhi Zhoumo article places his death in the first lunar month of 1931 and names scarlet fever as the cause; Zhang Boju likewise records that he died in a first lunar month and that he had visited him in Tianjin shortly before. Si Shunwei’s article and Liu Jingyun’s article also give scarlet fever as the cause, Liu Jingyun’s with the date March 22, 1931; Liu Jingyun’s article also says that he lived only forty-one years.⁠[4][8][18][9]

The Fazhi Zhoumo article describes him as spending money like water; he left only 20 yuan, found in a brush holder, and the cost of the funeral was raised by relatives, friends and disciples. The Fazhi Zhoumo article states that the funeral was paid for by his disciples and their disciples in the Green Gang; Si Shunwei’s article states instead that Zhang Boju, a relative and fellow member of the Four Young Masters, paid for the funeral and wrote a funeral couplet.⁠[1][4][18]

More than 200 men led by Yang Zixiang, his senior disciple in the Green Gang, wore mourning for him as the gang’s rules required, and military and civil officials, wealthy merchants, former Beiyang associates and secret-society figures of Tianjin came to pay their respects; more than 4,000 people, among them men of letters, monks, courtesans, actors and Green Gang members, followed the coffin. Chan’s paper adds at the same place that many courtesans he had once known came wearing white mourning cords in their hair to weep and keep vigil; the Fazhi Zhoumo article states that some monks and Taoist priests who had known him for years joined the funeral procession and that some prostitutes, white cords in their hair, came to mourn, so that his funeral became one of the sights of Tianjin at the time; the 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article states that more than a thousand people are said to have followed the coffin, among them Green Gang disciples and prostitutes who came of their own accord.⁠[8][1][4][14]

He was first buried at Xigu in Tianjin, and the grave was later moved to Zhaodezhuang; the tombstone was inscribed by Fang Dishan. The stone reads Tomb of Yuan Hanyun; Fang Dishan also wrote a funeral couplet for him, which speaks of him as clever all his life yet muddled for a moment, born in heaven and dying into hell.⁠[1][8]

Zhang Boju records that he wrote a funeral couplet for Yuan Kewen and that in the spring of the gengxu year (1970), calling on a poet at Xigu, he asked after the grave, wishing to pay his respects, and learned that the family had moved it, he knew not where.⁠[8]

His fifth brother, Yuan Kequan, wrote an elegy in twenty-six rhymes for his second brother, published in Beiyang Huabao on September 10, 1931.⁠[8]

After his death Liu Meizhen sold the house at Liangyili and moved with the children into rented quarters.⁠[1]

His wife, Liu Meizhen, was the daughter of Liu Shangwen, an expectant circuit intendant in Tianjin, and was an accomplished calligrapher; she made a facsimile manuscript copy of the Yuhu jushi wenji in his collection, and the copy is now in the Sichuan Provincial Library. Liu Jingyun’s article gives her name as Liu Ran, courtesy name Meizhen; Li Jun’s article calls her his favorite concubine. Wang Zhenliang’s article quotes Fan Zengxiang’s judgment that in strength of character she was no less than Lü Bicheng and in grace of spirit she surpassed Jiang Nanping; some of his books bear a seal recording that they were enjoyed by Kewen together with Lady Meizhen.⁠[1][9][12]

Wang Zhenliang’s article lists four sons: the eldest, Yuan Jiagu, whose wife, Fang Chuguan, was Fang Dishan’s daughter; the second, Yuan Jiazhang, whose wife, Lü Shizhu, was the daughter of Lü Haihuan, a founder of the Red Cross Society of China; the third, Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, a physicist like his wife, Chien-Shiung WuChien-Shiung WuChien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997) was a Chinese-born American experimental physicist who spent most of her career at Columbia University and worked on the Manhattan Project. Her cobalt-60 beta-decay experiment of 1956–1957, carried out with collaborators, provided the first experimental proof that parity is not conserved in weak interactions.Open the full entry; and the fourth, Yuan Jiaji, who served in his early years as a junior officer in the Nationalist navy and after 1949 was a member of the Tianjin municipal committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Liu Jingyun’s article gives Yuan Jiagu’s courtesy name as Bochong; the 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article states that Yuan Jiaji was his youngest son and a half-brother of Luke Chia-Liu Yuan by a different mother.⁠[1][9][14]

When Yuan Jiagu was betrothed to Fang Dishan’s daughter, the two families exchanged nothing more than a single rare old coin. Chan’s paper names the daughter whom Fang Dishan betrothed to Yuan Jiagu as Qinggen and adds that the wedding itself was very simple; Liu Jingyun’s article states that the bride was Fang Erqian’s fourth daughter, Fang Gen, courtesy name Chuguan.⁠[8][9]

An article carried in the digest Renmin Wenzhai states that he had a large household of wives and concubines and led an unrestrained life. The 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article states that he brought several concubines into his household and associated with more women than could be counted.⁠[19][14]

Chan’s paper mentions that when Wang Jihuan compiled Yuan Kewen’s poems inscribed on paintings he asked a mistress of Yuan Kewen’s, a woman surnamed Shen, to write a colophon.⁠[8]

Yuan Kequan exchanged 13 poems with him, more than with any other of his brothers.⁠[8]

Chan’s paper also records that in 1913 Yuan Kequan, with his sixth brother Yuan KehuanYuan KehuanYuan Kehuan was the sixth son of Yuan Shikai; he went to Europe in 1913 and attended Cheltenham College in England. His son-in-law Bai Junhe says in an oral account that he entered industry in North China in 1926, served as assistant manager and then general manager of Qixin Yanghui Gongsi (the Qixin cement company), and died in 1956.Open the full entry and his seventh brother Yuan KeqiYuan KeqiYuan Keqi was the seventh son of Yuan Shikai. In 1913 he and two of his elder brothers accompanied Yan Xiu on a journey to Europe and then attended Cheltenham College in England; he married the fifth daughter of Sun Baoqi, a foreign minister of the Republic of China, and left a recollection of his father’s last day.Open the full entry, accompanied Yan Xiu on a journey to Europe and that the three then attended Cheltenham College in England, and that in 1920 Yuan Kequan’s ninth brother Yuan KejiuYuan KejiuYuan Kejiu was the ninth son of Yuan Shikai; Phillips Academy’s record gives his year of birth as 1905 and Wang Birong’s book as 1903. Wang Birong writes that in 1914 his father betrothed him to Li Shaofang, the second daughter of Li Yuanhong, and that they married in 1934. He went to the United States to study in 1920 and attended Phillips Academy from 1921 to 1924; Bai Junhe, the husband of one of his nieces, says that after returning to China he served continuously as a director of Qixin Yanghui Gongsi (the Qixin cement company).Open the full entry, tenth brother Yuan KejianYuan KejianYuan Kejian was the tenth son of Yuan Shikai. He went to the United States to study in 1920; his second son, Yuan Jiacheng, says that he studied at Harvard University and, after returning to China, worked only briefly as an English-language secretary and thereafter lived on the family property. His wife, Lu Yuxiu, was a daughter of Lu Jianzhang, a former military governor of Shaanxi.Open the full entry, eleventh brother Yuan Ke’anYuan Ke’anYuan Ke’an was the eleventh son of Yuan Shikai; he went to the United States to study in 1920 and attended Phillips Academy from 1921 to 1924, whose student record gives his year of birth as 1906 and lists a later career in civil aviation in Taiwan and service as secretary to Claire Lee Chennault.Open the full entry and twelfth brother Yuan KeduYuan KeduYuan Kedu was the twelfth son of Yuan Shikai, born in 1907. In 1920 he went to the United States to study together with several of his elder brothers and a nephew; he attended Williston Junior and then Phillips Academy, which he left in 1925 without completing the course.Open the full entry went to the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry to study. A 2008 article in the magazine Huanqiu Renwu states that Yuan Shikai’s fourth son, Yuan KeduanYuan KeduanYuan Keduan (died 1951) was the fourth son of Yuan Shikai; a skilled calligrapher, he was a counselor in the Dayuanshuai Fu (generalissimo’s headquarters) of Zhang Zuolin and a nominal director of the Kailuan Kuangwuju (Kailuan mining administration).Open the full entry, was a skilled calligrapher.⁠[8][6]

Accounts of the names of his library differ: Wang Zhenliang’s article states that he first called it Hou Baisong Yichan, later renamed it Baisong Shucang (Hundred-Song Library), and that the name Bisong Shucang (Two-Hundred-Song Library) was bestowed by a friend; Chan’s paper has it first named Baisong Shucang and later Hou Baisong Yichan and Bisong Shucang. Wang Zhenliang’s article also cites his pupil Yu Yifen, who wrote in Hanyun xiaoshi that he owned nearly 200 Song editions and therefore styled his library Bisong Shucang.⁠[1][8]

The Beijing Evening News article puts his Song editions at 200 titles, more than Huang Pilie had owned; the Tunghai University Library journal article cites an account by Chen Zuogao in the newspaper Shen Bao in 1948, which puts the most precious of his Song and Yuan rare editions at about 200 titles. Chen Zuogao also wrote that he named his library Bisong Shucang, that collections such as those of Liu Hedong and Yu Xuanji were all gathered into it, so that his library became famous throughout the land, and that any Song or Yuan edition bearing his colophon could at once command a good price, connoisseurs holding him to be the only one of his kind since Huang Pilie.⁠[11][2]

Zhang Boju wrote that he collected only choice Song editions, a statement that Chan’s paper shows to be inaccurate.⁠[8]

Many of his books bear seals reading Guben Shushi, Bajingge, Hubaoku, Yunhelou, Hou Baisong Yichan and Baisong Shucang, among others.⁠[1]

He owed much of his collection to the help of Xu Senyu, and his diary often records books that Xu Senyu gave him or bought on his behalf, including Song editions of Beishan lu and of the poems and lyrics of Baishi Daoren and a fragment of parallel prose from Dunhuang.⁠[1]

Jiguge manuscript copies that had belonged to the collector Qiling, among them Guwen yuan, Song gaoseng shixuan, Jiubian ci, Qinqu sanbian and the memorials of the Song chancellor Li Gang (Song chengxiang Li Zhongding gong zouyi), likewise came to him.⁠[1]

Besides old books he collected stamps, gold pound coins, small bronzes, old coins, seals and fan ribs, and when examining and enjoying such objects he made ink rubbings, stamped them with seals in vermilion and attached them to his diary entries; he wrote a work on old coins, Quanjian, which appears not to have been published. Wang Zhenliang’s article says that almost without intending it he became a collector of coins and of stamps; his Quanjian bears a title slip by Lian Quan of Jiaxing.⁠[2][1]

Zhou Shutao, a grandson of Zhou Fu, was on friendly terms with Yuan Kewen alone among the Yuan sons. Zhou Qiqian’s article states that the two shared a taste for seeking out and collecting rare old books and often compared notes, and that Zhou Shutao later more than once expressed regret in colophons and letters that his precious collections had been almost entirely dispersed.⁠[3]

Influenced by his father from childhood, Yuan Kewen loved the theater and was a well-known amateur performer of both Peking opera and Kunqu.⁠[8]

After Yuan Shikai’s death he often performed Kunqu with Pu Tong, known by the sobriquet Hongdou Guanzhu, playing the Jianwen emperor in the scene Candu (also called Bayang).⁠[8]

Zhang Boju records that after he grew stout he appeared only as Jiang Gan in Qunyinghui and as Tang Qin in Shentou; one winter Zhang Boju shared the stage of the Kaiming Theater with him and Pu Tong, and he played in Shentou citang opposite Wang Fengqing.⁠[8]

In the same note Zhang Boju writes that the performance broke up at two in the morning before the play was finished and that Yuan Kewen, still in high spirits, went on with him to drink at a courtesan house; it was snowing heavily, many people were asking for Yuan Kewen’s calligraphy, and he wrote with a cup in his left hand and the brush in his right until about four o’clock. Zhang Boju adds that a courtesan ground the ink and spread the paper for him.⁠[8]

Zhang Boju was a close friend, and the two often composed lyrics and acted together and once painted a picture of plum blossoms jointly.⁠[8]

Of his writings, a selection of his verse, Hanyun shiji, was edited and printed early on by Yi Shifu, and his lyrics, Huanshang ci, were issued in mimeograph by Zhang Boju after his death; Xin bing mi yuan, Xinhua miji, Sanshi nian wenjian xinglu and Huanshang sisheng are for the most part collections of his newspaper and magazine articles, and his diary, Hanyun riji, covers more than twenty years. A 2024 China News Service report states that the Xiling copy of Hanyun riji, which had disappeared for several years before resurfacing, is the only manuscript of his diary known to survive; before it the diary was known only from two facsimile reproductions printed in the Republican period, whose original manuscript is lost, and the Xiling copy is earlier than those reproductions. The manuscript records the most brilliant period of his life, in Shanghai, Tianjin and Beijing, covering opera, collecting, love and poetry; it records his dealings with more than 230 teachers, friends, old acquaintances, relatives and secret-society figures, contains 33 connoisseurship notes and more than 30 poems and records of literary composition, and has attached rubbings of 23 objects or sets of objects, among them coins, bronzes and items for the scholar’s desk, while 9 further rubbings have been lost. On November 11–12, 2024, Xiling Yinshe Auction Co., Ltd. and the Club of the Tianjin Municipal Committee of the CPPCC jointly showed the manuscript at an exhibition in Tianjin entitled Tang xu dao renjian: Yuan Kewen riji huijia zhan (Yuan Kewen’s diary comes home).⁠[1][17]

Chan’s paper notes that he was famed for his poetry and prose but that his verse collection is now hard to find, and that Huanshang ci chiefly voices personal sorrow; his poetry manuscripts are said to have been kept by Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, and their whereabouts are unknown.⁠[8][8]

A profile of Luke Chia-Liu Yuan in the Taiwanese magazine Science Development states that Yuan Shikai’s memorials to the throne were drafted by Yuan Kewen.⁠[20]

In 1931 Zhou Shutao paid for a photographic reprint of his notes on 29 Song editions in his own hand, Hanyun shouxie suocang Songben tiyao ershijiu zhong, with a title slip by Fang Dishan and a postscript by Zhou Shutao. Zhou Qiqian’s article states that Zhou Shutao paid for the reprint because Yuan Kewen had left little behind and his rare books and antiquities had been scattered, so that the work might survive.⁠[3][1]

In 1981 Zhou Shutao, then aged 91, wrote a postscript for Hanyun quanjian chao, compiled by Wang Guichen, in which he again recalled their friendship.⁠[3]

In 1999 Shanxi Guji Chubanshe and Shanxi Jiaoyu Chubanshe in Taiyuan published Xin bing mi yuan and Hanyun riji in one volume, punctuated and collated by Zhang Jihong, in the fourth series of the collection Minguo biji xiaoshuo daguan; the volume appends an essay on his life by Tao Zhuo’an.⁠[21]

Li Hongying of the National Library of China compiled Hanyun cangshu tiba jishi, which gathers 84 of his book colophons; Guo Mingfang’s article in the Tunghai University Library journal adds 16 colophons not in the book, bringing the total to 100. In the colophons that Guo Mingfang added he records that he obtained a book in Shanghai on the sixteenth day of the second lunar month of 1917 and bought another there in the spring of 1919, having it rebound; that, already owning the Huang and Yu printings of Wang’s annotated poems of Su Shi, he paid a thousand in gold for the Jingjin Dongpo wenji shilüe so that the two would make a matched pair; and that among Song writers he liked Su Shi and Huang Tingjian best. Guo Mingfang also cites a note of the HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry-Yenching Library in the United States stating that its Song edition of the Han shu was obtained by him from Fu Zengxiang in exchange for a fragment of a Song edition of the Hequ shu chapter of the Shiji.⁠[2][1]

A biography of him by Wang Zhonghe, Yuan Kewen zhuan, was published in 2008 by Baihua Wenyi Chubanshe in Tianjin. Li Jun’s article mentions an essay on him, Yuan Hanyun: Huanshang ciren, in Zheng Zhong’s book Jinghua shoucang shijia.⁠[8][12]

Yuan Kewen is counted among the “Four Young Masters of the Republic.” The versions that Zhang Boju set down in Xu Hongxian jishi shi buzhu all include Yuan Kewen, Zhang Boju himself and Zhang Xueliang; the fourth is variously Lu Xiaojia, son of Lu Yongxiang, Zhang Xiaoruo, son of Zhang Jian, or Pu Tong. The Tunghai University Library journal article likewise counts him among the Four Young Masters of the Republic; the 2024 China News Service report names him with Zhang Xueliang, Zhang Boju and Pu Tong as the Four Young Masters and states that he had no taste for politics and was accomplished in verse and couplets, music, chess, calligraphy and painting, connoisseurship of antiquities, and Kunqu and Peking opera. The Fazhi Zhoumo article suggests that, Zhang Xueliang apart, he was perhaps the best known of the four.⁠[4][2][17]

The Fazhi Zhoumo article also gives another widely circulated version, consisting of Sun Ke, Zhang Xueliang, Duan Hongye and Lu Xiaojia, which does not include him.⁠[4]

The obituary notice in Beiyang Huabao described him as especially accomplished in literary composition and calligraphy and said that the world of the arts had lost one more of its eminent figures.⁠[1]

The article carried in Renmin Wenzhai relates that when Zhou Enlai received Luke Chia-Liu Yuan in 1973 he remarked that Luke Chia-Liu Yuan’s grandfather, Yuan Shikai, was a statesman, his father, Yuan Kewen, a man of letters, and he himself a physicist. The 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article cites the recollection of Yuan Xiaolin, a descendant of Yuan Shikai’s sixth brother, that Luke Chia-Liu Yuan later recounted to him that Zhou Enlai had also said that there were now Communist Party members among the Yuan descendants and that each generation of the family had made more progress than the last.⁠[19][14]

Chan’s paper argues that in the poems of Yuan Kequan and Zhang Boju it is Yuan Kewen who figures as the soul of the Yuan family, weighing even more than Yuan Shikai; it also notes Zhang Boju’s own admission that what he wrote about Yuan Kewen contains flattery. The 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article records a saying in the Yuan family: the eldest son, Yuan Keding, had the most power, the second, Yuan Kewen, the most talent, and the sixth, Yuan Kehuan, the most money; it also says that compared with his elder brother he lived a life of show and dissipation. Si Shunwei’s article states that he had a man of letters’ aloofness and backbone but also a young aristocrat’s weakness for music and women. Zhou Qiqian’s article calls him a romantic man of talent who took little part in political or business affairs.⁠[8][8][14][18][3]

Si Shunwei, writing in the Hanmo wangshi column of Guangming Daily, states that he could write seal, clerical, regular and running scripts, and that most remarkable of all he could write lying on an opium couch, holding the paper in one hand and writing in the air with the other; whenever he was short of money he sold his calligraphy, a practice known as selling writing to stave off hunger. The article adds that he could write both small and large characters; for large characters he had people hold the two ends of the paper while he wrote in mid-air, his brush as strong as ever, and on some days he wrote dozens of couplets, all of which sold.⁠[18]

In October 1926 he advertised his calligraphy for sale in the recently founded Beiyang Huabao, at these rates: 5 yuan a character for large characters up to one chi, 5 yuan a chi for hanging scrolls in running script, 2 yuan a chi for screen panels in running script, 5 yuan a fan, and double for small regular script and seal script.⁠[18]

In 1927 he was in Shanghai, staying at the Dadong Hotel, when his money ran out; as he prepared to return north he drew up his own price list, intending to pay the bill from the sale of his calligraphy, at 8 or 10 yuan a couplet. Once the list appeared in the press buyers crowded to his door, and they were still coming twenty days later. Once he had money, the article says, he was so content that he no longer wanted to leave.⁠[18]

Shortly before his death in 1931 his rate for large characters had risen to 10 yuan a character and for fans to 10 yuan each; Si Shunwei’s article compares this with Qi Baishi’s rates in 1931, 10 yuan for a two-chi hanging scroll of flowers and 10 yuan for a fan two chi wide or 8 yuan for one of up to one and a half chi, and finds them roughly equal.⁠[18]

Si Shunwei’s article states that each of Yuan Shikai’s sons is said to have received 120,000 yuan after their father’s death, a large fortune at the time, but that his share was in the hands of his wife, Liu Meizhen; when Zhang Zuolin, Zhang Zongchang and others offered him nominal posts as senior counsellor or adviser that would have paid him for the use of his name, he turned them all down, nor would he readily ask for loans. The 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article states that he did no other work and earned money only by writing inscriptions and selling calligraphy.⁠[18][14]

Liu Jingyun’s article cites Tang Lusun’s essay on him as the Cao Zijian of modern times, which lists fifteen or sixteen concubines over the years, among them Wenxue, Meiyun, Wuchen, Qiqiong, Xiaotaohong, Xueliqing, Qinyunlou, Sutaichun, Xiaoyingying, Hua Xiaolan, Gao Qiyun, Yu Peiwen and Tang Zhijun; Liu Jingyun holds that Meiyun and Qiqiong were one and the same woman and faults Zheng Yimei for listing them as two.⁠[9]

On Meiyun’s names and origins, in his essay Wenpi duijiu tan in the magazine Banyue he called her Yayun, a native of Changshu in Jiangsu, and wrote that she had been raised by a family named Su; in a sequel published in Banyue on February 23, 1925, he wrote that she had come to him and gave Qiqiong as her courtesy name, a name that Liu Jingyun, reading this passage, takes to have been chosen by Fang Dishan, whereas the diary of Bao Tianxiao for April 14, 1925, quoted by Liu Jingyun, notes that he had renamed her Qiqiong; by 1925 the titles of his poems call her Meiyun. Writing in the newspaper Xibao in January 1927, Tianjian stated that her original surname was Zou and her name Sanbao, and that she came from Huashu near Wuxi; Liu Jingyun accepts Tianjian’s account. Bao Tianxiao also remarks in his diary that she was restless and unruly and would probably not be easy to manage.⁠[9]

In the sequel he wrote that Liu Meizhen sold her hairpins and earrings to raise 3,000 and bought her out of the courtesan house without his knowledge; Zheng Yimei also gives 3,000, while Tianjian gives seven or eight thousand, a figure Liu Jingyun considers exaggerated. Liu Jingyun dates his meeting her, buying her out and taking her as a concubine to the end of 1924 or the beginning of 1925.⁠[9]

On December 28, 1926 (the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh lunar month), Meiyun’s birthday, he gave a banquet for her at the Far East Hotel in Shanghai, where he was staying; Zhang Chunfan recorded his invitation to it in the newspaper Xiao Ribao on December 30, and Bu Zhangwu published a poem for her birthday in Shanghai Huabao on January 4, 1927. The record Liu Jingyun quotes says that his pupils pooled their money for the birthday banquet.⁠[9]

On March 6, 1928, Bu Zhangwu published a short piece entitled Xiatang in the newspaper Dabao, saying that his consort Qiqiong had left him; from this Liu Jingyun concludes that by early 1928 the relationship was beyond repair. On February 18, 1929, Yu Daxiong, writing as Baofeng in Jingbao, announced Meiyun’s death and quoted the letter he had sent from Tianjin with his funeral couplet Ku Meiyun (Weeping for Meiyun), with the note that it was written in tears from his pillow on the evening of the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth month of the wuchen year; Liu Jingyun gives the date of her death as that day, the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month of the wuchen year, February 8, 1929. Issue 698 of Beiyang Huabao, of November 3, 1931, printed a photograph captioned the tomb of Su Meiyun, consort of Yuan Hanyun, at Xigu; on its left is a couplet by him, reading “Old sorrows and new joys all come before my eyes; the scholar in blue and the lady in red sleeves are alike at the ends of the earth,” and below that a postscript written by Fang Dishan, too blurred in print to be read.⁠[9]

Liu Jingyun’s article states that Xiaoyingying’s real name was Zhu Yuezhen, and Zheng Yimei says that she was preceded by Tang Zhijun. Guo Yujing’s Yunying yanshi relates that he and Xiaoyingying held a formal wedding at the Beijing Hotel, that while he was living in Beijing the Zhongyuan Coal Mining Company paid him a sinecure salary of 580 yuan a month, and that the compensation paid over time on Xiaoyingying’s account came to about 8,000. Xiaoyingying bore him a daughter known as Sanmao, whom Liu Jingyun identifies as Yuan Jiahua.⁠[9]

Liu Jingyun’s article states that he came to know Sheng Wan and Yu Peiwen, grew especially close to Yu Peiwen and soon took her as a concubine, the last he took. In his afterword to the 1975 Hong Kong Dahua Press edition of Xin bing mi yuan, Gao Boyu states that Zheng Yimei was an old friend of his and that the two saw each other often during his last four years in Shanghai.⁠[9]

The 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article states that when his youngest son, Yuan Jiaji, was at middle school under the Japanese-sponsored regime, which imposed an education designed to make pupils submissive, Yuan Jiaji resisted learning Japanese and led his classmates in teasing the Japanese teacher, who denounced him to the Japanese military police; one night someone from the school ran to the home of his elder sister to warn that the Japanese were coming to arrest him and that he must flee. That year the navy of the Wang Jingwei regime was recruiting in Tianjin, and his sister signed him up; he served at Weihai in Shandong and after more than a year of training, unable to bear the monotony of the life, found a chance to run away. After Japan surrendered he served on a warship given by the United States to the Nationalist government, went with that government to Taiwan, and later used a chance to go to Hong Kong to return to Tianjin. The article adds that Yuan Jiaji, then in his twenties, often went dancing in the dance halls of Tianjin and was an outstanding dancer.⁠[14]

After the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries began in 1950, Yuan Jiaji was arrested, suspected of being an agent because on returning to Tianjin he had said to companions that if he could not find work he would go back to Hong Kong; he spent three years in prison and then underwent reform through labor in factories and on farms, twenty-odd years passing in this way. Because his conduct was judged good he was allowed to marry, and his daughter, Yuan Jing, was born in 1959; when the Cultural Revolution began he was still in custody, and his wife, Liu Aifang, was repeatedly subjected to struggle sessions. Once freed, he worked at a vehicle repair works under the Tianjin municipal transport bureau and later became a member of the Tianjin committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The article holds that Luke Chia-Liu Yuan’s return to China in 1973 and his reception by Zhou Enlai directly improved the fortunes of the Yuan family, Yuan Jiaji among them.⁠[14]

An article by Zhang Xiong published in Nandu Zhoukan in 2011 and reprinted in Renmin Wenzhai in August of that year gives a fuller account of Yuan Jiaji: as a boy he was mischievous and disliked study, was deeply embarrassed when history lessons reached the chapter on the ambitious Yuan, and had among his classmates grandsons of the Beiyang warlords Duan Qirui and Cao Kun. He had trained at Liugong Island, and after the war against Japan he was absorbed into the Central Naval Training Corps and assigned to the landing ship Meizhen, where he learned the cha-cha, the rumba and all kinds of jazz dances from American sailors; in September 1949 he was transferred to the warship Zhongsheng, whose executive officer, a friend of his second brother Yuan Jiazhang, promoted him to ensign; when the Zhongsheng called at Hong Kong he went ashore on the pretext of buying cigarettes and jumped onto a tram and away.⁠[19]

The article says that after half a year in Hong Kong without finding work he met at the docks the ship Hubei, in from Tianjin, whose crew said that Tianjin was now doing well and that members of the Yuan family could find work like anyone else, and on May 25, 1950, he sailed back to Tianjin; at the municipal public security bureau he gave an account of himself over several days, filled in a registration form for public security personnel and went home to await word, and meanwhile won first prize in a dance contest and became a well-known figure in the dance halls of Tianjin. The article says that he was detained for investigation in April 1951, when the national campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries began (the 2016 Huanqiu Renwu article gives 1950), and sentenced to three years on three charges: counter-revolution, impersonating a police officer and spreading rumors; after serving his term he was kept on as a retained worker in factories under the public security system and for the next twenty years farmed, raised pigs, made mud bricks, fired kilns and carried bricks, and was named an advanced worker several years running. In December 1975 the president of the Tianjin court asked him what he wished for; he asked only to have his name cleared and to be given work, and he was then assigned to the No. 6 Vehicle Repair Works under the transport bureau, holding his first regular job at the age of 50. The article adds that before Luke Chia-Liu Yuan’s return in 1973 Zhou Enlai instructed the Tianjin party committee and revolutionary committee to spend three days putting the relevant policies into effect for Yuan Shikai’s descendants in Tianjin, and that in 2011 Yuan Jiaji was 84 and had rarely gone out since a spinal complaint was found two years before.⁠[19]

Yuan Jing recalls that she started primary school in 1967; that once, when the school required a form, her parents agonized over the class-background box and in the end entered “warlord”; and that in her third or fourth year, when a history lesson dealt with the 1911 Revolution, the teacher said in front of the class that it contained a descendant of reactionaries and traitors. At the time of the 2016 article she had recently retired as a division head of the Tianjin overseas Chinese affairs office and was a member of the women’s sector of the Tianjin committee of the CPPCC; at the Qingming festival and on memorial days she goes to a temple to burn incense.⁠[14]